Which countries are restricted on Polymarket?
Short answer: Polymarket restricts 49 countries, provinces and regions in three tiers. Seven sanctioned places are fully blocked. Another 37, including the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Australia and four Canadian provinces, are close-only: you can exit positions but not open new ones. Five more, including Ireland, Japan and the Netherlands, are close-only on the website.
Tier 1: fully blocked
These locations are blocked on both the website and the API. No new orders can be placed and existing positions cannot be closed from there:
- Iran
- Syria
- Cuba
- North Korea
- Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine
Tier 2: close-only on the website and the API
From these locations you can close a position you already hold, but you cannot open a new one:
- Americas: United States (and US Minor Outlying Islands), Canada — British Columbia, Ontario, Alberta and Quebec only — Argentina, Brazil, Nicaragua, Venezuela
- Europe: United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, Poland, Slovakia, Belarus, Russia
- Asia-Pacific: Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, Myanmar
- Middle East and Africa: Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Yemen, Burundi, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Zimbabwe
Tier 3: close-only on the website, API not restricted
- Ireland
- Japan
- Netherlands
- South Korea
- Malta — sports markets only
What the tiers mean in practice
"Close-only" is the important one for most readers. It is not a ban on holding an account; it is a block on adding risk. If you opened positions while travelling or before your country was added, you can still sell them, but the buy button is disabled. The restriction is applied by location at the time of the order, not by nationality or by where your wallet was created.
Countries that are not on the list, such as South Africa, Nigeria, India, Spain, Sweden, Mexico or the United Arab Emirates, are not restricted by Polymarket itself. That is a statement about the platform's rules only. Whether using it is lawful where you live is a separate question for your own regulator, and Polymarket holds no local licence in most of those places.
Why the list keeps growing
Almost every addition followed a regulator's action: a gambling authority ruling that event contracts are unlicensed betting, or a financial regulator treating them as derivatives. The list has moved several times in the past two years, which is why any page that states it should carry the date it was checked. This one was checked on 11 November 2026.
How PolyGram fits in
PolyGram shows Polymarket's live prices and event pages inside Telegram, and reading them needs no account or wallet. Whether you may trade from where you live is decided by PolyGram's own terms and by your local law, not by this page; check both before you deposit.
Source: Polymarket's own geographic-restrictions documentation, checked on 11 November 2026. This page is information, not legal advice; rules change, so confirm before you trade.